Mosrael
by Dragonlord Stephi
Summary: "The Piper growls. He thinks he knows this place. It is not a moment of pleased recognition. Another bell screams to fill the silence, now that its predecessor has quieted." The Piper teaches the Abhorsen a lesson in cowardice.


**Mosrael**

He opens his eyes as the last echo of a bell's peals fade into the mist.

Blood has pooled on his face, blinding. His limbs refuse to move, weighed down with rigor mortis. He is in water, shallow, rushing water that fills him with an energy-leeching chill. It carries his color away, stealing the rosiness in his flesh, but does not carry away the blood.

The Piper growls. He thinks he knows this place. It is not a moment of pleased recognition.

Another bell screams to fill the silence, now that its predecessor has quieted. Warmth plucks at his legs, and the Piper finds himself standing, taking a step backwards, and another. The water is slightly deeper after the third step; he grits his teeth, and wills himself to resist.

It's a monumental effort, and he has to bark out a word of the Architect to fully halt his progress, though his legs tremble, eager to follow the bell's call, eager to go further down the river. But he is in one place, not moving, and that is what matters.

The bell rings again, and the Piper shouts another, stronger word, lurching forward. That was extraneous, but he wanted to make a point to the bell-wielder.

The bell-wielder has fallen to their knees, one hand still clutching a bell's mahogany handle, the other clamped tightly across their mouth. Their shoulders shake with what the Piper presumes is agony.

Even they are too mortal to escape the effects of playing God.

"Abhorsen," he spits.

Slowly, the bell-wielder looks up. He does not flinch at the face, unknown to him—they change so often, it is impossible to keep track of them all. He only recognizes the Abhorsen by the bells, the sword—a gift of the Architect—and the blue tunic emblazoned with silver keys.

This Abhorsen is female, but other than that, he cannot tell her apart from the others. Centuries of black hair, Death-river eyes, and Death-river skin have made them all, regardless of new ethnicities introduced to the line throughout the ages, practically the same. Indistinguishable.

To her credit, this one isn't frightened of his mangled, half-ethereal form. His mask hides the damage of the knife that carved out his eye and half his face, his cloak the ravages of Nothing across his body, but here in Death they have always abandoned him.

No, this one does not blink at his deformity, but pulls her hand away, wet with spit, wipes it on her tunic, and pulls out the sword.

The Piper always thought it a waste the Architect gave them the sword. Then again, he thought creating the Nine Bright-shiners a waste. This world, this secondary realm, was not organic like the others; like the House, She'd made it as an afterthought to police her creations. Whereas the House recorded, this realm's sole purpose was to clean up the messes of mortality. Certainly, She let the Nine Bright-shiners begin it as they wished, and didn't meddle with the people She planted there for the place to be less 'empty,' but all She had really cared about was the river of Death. One day She would travel it too, and that day the river would dry.

Until then, She gave the Abhorsen a sword.

It was the Nine Bright-shiners who had given the Abhorsens the bells, and She had found that amusing. "A large improvement," She'd said, pleased at Her creation's ingenuity. "A sword is a bit scant, on second thought."

The Piper disagrees. A sword was more than enough; the bells added made the Abhorsens more than a mere annoyance.

"You need to go back," she says.

Her voice echoes, even though Death appears flat and featureless—at least, where they are standing, the gates far away. He can't even hear the rushing waterfalls. Indeed, he has come much closer to Life this time than the others. He is getting much better at this. Ten thousand years of practice will do that.

"This river was not meant for my kind," the Piper says. "Stand aside, mortal, before I show you where it goes."

"So you can resist Kibeth," she says. The Piper lets out a scoff at this sudden and untactful change in topic. The least she can do is show a reaction to a proper threat. "I wonder if Saraneth can bind you."

"Do you really wish to try?" the Piper drawls. "Haven't your kind tried all seven in enough combinations to exhaust all possible permutations? Yet here I am."

"I—" she begins.

"If you really are serious," the Piper says, a grin splitting the lips of his hideous face, a grin that would have been ugly even if he retained his Denizen beauty—for it was the sort that revealed more about the soul than its visage— "you ought to ring Astarael and take us both back. You would earn several hundred years of relative peace from my end, but at what cost, young Abhorsen? At what cost?"

"I—"

"And what does it matter to you," he continues, raising his voice, "if I _do_ step out into Life? It is not as if I terrorize your people, or bring inimical effects upon your world. I have my own worldlet that serves me well, when you pesky hindrances allow me to make it that far. Is it really worth Astarael's price to put me back?"

"You are of the Greater Dead," she says firmly. Her hand drifts towards the bell, the other tightening around the sword, and the Piper resists the urge to gloat.

He was going to fight her, but in that moment, he sees a flicker in her eyes.

She reaches for Astarael, but he knows she will not sound it.

He has already won.

"It is the nature of Life to pass into Death," she says.

"For mortals, perhaps," the Piper says. "When we Denizens do so, it is not natural, but a perversion of our natures, an unfortunate incident."

"Then allow me to put this incident at an end."

Before her fingers can fully grasp Astarael's handle, the Piper puts his instrument to his lips. It is a single pipe, usually, but in Death it is seven. Pan flutes. Pan pipes for the Piper. It had only taken him several decades to learn the use of the bells, or the petty sorcery to transform Mother's gift into a decent rendition.

He lets out a single note.

Saraneth, the Binder.

The Abhorsen shrieks as his will worms its way into her own, and her hands relax, falling to her sides. The sword falls into the water with a soundless splash.

The Piper blows on Saraneth again, in a dim rhythm, and the Abhorsen bites her lip, blood trickling down her chin, but she cannot resist. She does not have Mother's words, and she cannot fight against Mother's gift.

Her fingers scrabble against the smooth sides of Mosrael, the Waker, before they find purchase.

"Please!" she cries. "I'm not ready! You can't! I can't go to Death, and you can't go to—"

The Piper takes a moment to blow on Dyrim. Her voice vanishes.

He pauses. "In truth," he says, "I want to teach you a lesson. I dislike cowards, and I dislike cowards who send others where they dare not tread even more. I could have sent you to Death, or at least part of the way there, without any trouble on my part—but how much better to let you do it yourself."

Her lips move. He does not care to read them; her pleas are meaningless.

"Perhaps, if you are not ready, you may return," he says. "Climb back, as I have done. Climb back, as countless others have. Will you do it, Abhorsen? Will you cling to Life so that another of your kind can steal it from you, or will you submit and lay it before my feet? Do not ask others to go where you dare not tread."

She hangs her head as her hand lifts Mosrael from its harness. Tears drip to be swallowed in the depths of the river, but the Piper is unmoved. Only one woman's tears had ever caused him to hesitate, and he doubted even hers would move him now. He used to think himself made of clay, brittle but with enough mortal in him to bend and give, if only the right amount of water added; now he knows he is obsidian, hard and cutting and never softening.

"Do cheer up," he says. "I'm sure you won't be lonely. All those Dead you've sent back—why, many ought to recognize you!"

He takes dark satisfaction at how her sobs intensify at the thought. Good. He has only come so far throughout the centuries, fighting against Death's current, sometimes dragging himself inch by inch, because of revenge. His soul burns with the desire to kill Sunday for killing him, and all who aid his traitorous brother, regardless of how, deserve the same fate. This girl would send him where Sunday would—and that makes her, for a moment, the proxy for thousands of years of ire stored up against the Architect's first son.

As she would have done to him, he will do to her. Let her go to Death. She deserves it.

The Piper blows on Saraneth one last time, and she rings Mosrael at his command. She hurtles back towards Death and its Gates, and he rushes forward, the current sweeping him along, towards Life.

* * *

He opens his eyes as the last echo of a bell's peals fade into the mist.

The Piper is deep in Death, deeper than he ever wanted to be. It was a nasty death, the most recent; his body does not hold together well, and careless actions are bound to happen in wars between immortals. At least he has taken Saturday's loyalty and surrender before he has fallen. She will be there, when he returns, waiting. She and his revenge, waiting…

The Piper begins to walk, but he does not go far before he sees the Abhorsen is there, dressed all in black, a set of necromancer's bells in a bandolier across her chest. He sense she was not the one who rang the bell, by the way her eyes narrow and her mouth contorts into a grimace. She is watching, waiting.

In the parting of the mist, he sees another figure striding towards them, one hand still clutching Saraneth, the other tight around the hilt of a sword, the point trailing in the water. Ripples dance in the figure's wake like a bridal train for a macabre wedding.

"I do not wish to prolong this," says the new Abhorsen. "As one of our own, you do not deserve to have such extenuated suffering."

"Do not send me to walk where you dare not tread," the Abhors the Piper killed hisses, steam issuing from her mouth.

The Piper turns from the new Greater Dead and the new Abhorsen, to let them battle as they will.

He has far to walk before he returns to Life. His New Nithlings have kept watch over his body for him, and all he has to do is return.

The Piper does not look behind him, where, if the mist parts just so, he sees not the Ninth Gate waiting, but the void of Nothing. No, he looks in front, where Sunday awaits, Sunday and his inheritance. _He_ is the true Rightful Heir, and he will be sure to stand here, at the lip of Death, laughing as that river finally dries and he must fight it no more.

* * *

 **A/N: As a sign of my desire to return to the KttK fandom, here is this one-shot. I hope you all enjoyed it as much as I did writing it.**

 **I fully intended to finish the story of 'Silence, Sound' and 'The Spitting Image,' but I may rehaul those fics entirely. Furthermore, 'Morrow Days vs the World' is coming along, but ever so slowly. I apologize for ridiculously long periods of inactivity; university is stealing most of my time.**

 **I would say, 'Let the Will be done,' but I think by this point no one in the fandom actually likes the end result.**

 **Take care!**

 **~Dragonlord Stephi**


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